“I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
In “Network,” a 1976 movie, William Holden, playing an aging anchorman, delivers this impassioned diatribe to his TV audience after finding out the network would fire him due to poor ratings.
He announces to the audience that he will kill himself in order to avoid being terminated. He decides he can speak his mind, and goads his viewers to go to their windows and express their anger to the world. It turns out this boosts ratings and the executives cannot fire him.
That diatribe should have been a Trump campaign slogan since he single-handedly stoked the fires of anger, resentment and fear that already smoldered in America to gain victory. A CNN poll in 2015 suggested that 69 percent of Americans are either “very angry” or “somewhat angry” about “the way things are going” in America while Americans in greater proportions disapprove of Washington D.C. and its politicians.
The appeal of Donald Trump that led to his electoral victory is due to the frustration of moderate and conservative voters as to what they correctly see as a failed system. A strong person with simple answers can appeal to voters who believe he will “get things done,” but when career politicians promise change, the promise rings hollow.
Mr. Trump had the advantage of being able to don the mantle of the “outsider.” However, he was a regular participant in the business of influence-peddling and lobbying, the most destructive influence to the fair administration of government in America.
Mr. Trump was merely playing the part of an anti-establishment candidate while slipping quickly into the mold of a regular Washington politician who ignores the people and fails to keep his commitments to the people.
Americans are generally known for a positive outlook on life, which is a better mindset to have than being mad when making important decisions. Donald Trump tapped into voters’ frustration better than any other candidate and he has an opportunity to do something about the status quo.
The people are waiting for household incomes for working-class Americans to follow productivity and efficiency and profitability gains. That could be facilitated by having a more fair tax system.
However, Mr. Trump introduced an ill-conceived proposal to repeal Obamacare that would have taken health care away from millions of Americans, and his own party could not support it.
In addition, President Trump’s tax plan is one big boon to corporations and the wealthy. One commentator stated that it would benefit Mr. Trump “enormously.” The proposal cuts tax rates for businesses from 35 to 15 percent and creates a “pass-through” treatment for business income that is currently taxed at the businessowners’ individual income tax rates instead of at a corporate rate. This loophole would overwhelmingly benefit high-income people with businesses.
Economic analysts Josh Bivens and Hunter Blair wrote that the “pass-through” tax cut “will help private equity managers and people like President Trump: wealthy people who will now be able to reconfigure their taxes by reclassifying themselves as independent contractors.”
Mr. Trump’s plan would also eliminate the alternative minimum tax or AMT, established to ensure that the wealthy professionals couldn’t take too many deductions and eliminate their tax liability altogether.
Mr. Trump’s tax return showed that in tax year 2015, “he paid 25% of $153 million in taxable income instead of the less than 4 percent that he would have paid without” the AMT, according to the New York Times.
Who would make up for the lost tax revenue if we get TrumpTax? We should be mad as hell about the Trump administration’s Republican “big business” as usual policies, so far.